Thursday, April 21, 2011

Contented People Are More Likely to Vote

Baylor political scientist Patrick Flavin thought contented people would be less likely to vote, and discontented people more. Just the opposite turns out to be true.

This makes sense to me. Bill Bishop argued in The Big Sort that voting is mostly a way of expressing solidarity with community values. People in the majority party or ideology are more likely to turn out to vote regularly, while the minority party or ideology is much harder to mobilize in any given constituency.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Any other studies out there? I never vote unless I'm upset with the way things are going.

Gruntled said...

There's one in every crowd ...

ceemac said...

The key word in your post seems to be regularly. Gruntled people vote regularly. Disgruntled people only vote occasionally

Gruntled said...

ceemac, I think you have it right. This may also be the answer to Anonymous' query.